1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to thin-film thermoelectric devices and methods of manufacturing such devices, and particularly to thin-film thermoelectric devices with high utilization efficiency and high cooling/packing density and methods of manufacturing such devices.
Thermoelectric thin films have been used to form high-performance thermoelectric devices. Superlattice thermoelectric materials and quantum-well and quantum-dot structured materials have been proposed. However, there exists a need to produce thin-film thermoelectric devices with a good thermoelement aspect-ratio for em  μm-thick thin-films, and a need to easily interconnect these thermoelements. The thin-film thermoelectric devices should also be scalable to a variety of heat loads and manufacturable in large volume (area). The methods used to manufacture the devices must be amenable to automation, compatible with cascading or multi-staging (leading to a smaller ΔT per stage for a higher coefficient of performance in a refrigerator or for higher efficiency in a power generator) and is equally applicable to both cooling and power generation. Further, the device technology would enable the insertion of high-ZT thin-films (i.e. films with a figure of merit ZT greater than one) into high performance cooling devices while keeping the current levels compatible with present-day coolers and similar power generation devices.